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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27037318">he's perfect as he can be</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious'>SafelyCapricious</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ain't no grave can hold my body down [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Misunderstandings, No Sex, Pining, Sex Talk, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:46:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,171</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27037318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re sitting inside a cafe, drinking peach tea, before the next competition and Otabek is trying to memorialize the moment in his mind. This is what he misses the most in the off season — the thrill of competition is a very close second, but these quiet moments with Yuri…if he could have them all the time he would be completely happy.</p><p>Not that Yuri is every quiet for an extended period of time. Even now, without him speaking he’s near shouting with the bright colors and patterns he’s wearing.</p><p>Otabek finds it charming, despite himself sometimes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Otabek Altin &amp; Yuri Plisetsky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ain't no grave can hold my body down [15]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950148</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>he's perfect as he can be</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from (edited) lyrics for She's so High by Tal Bachman</p><p>This is for Fictober day 15, "jack-o-lantern" and no I totally didn't just add that in to fit the prompt shut up.</p><p>Uh, I love YOI and I love this pairing. This is meant to be cute, idk if I succeeded. Let me know.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">They’re sitting inside a cafe, drinking peach tea, before the next competition and Otabek is trying to memorialize the moment in his mind. This is what he misses the most in the off season — the thrill of competition is a very close second, but these quiet moments with Yuri…if he could have them all the time he would be completely happy.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Not that Yuri is every quiet for an extended period of time. Even now, without him speaking he’s near shouting with the bright colors and patterns he’s wearing.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Otabek finds it charming, despite himself sometimes.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Yuri is on his phone, tongue peaking out just a bit and brow furrowed which could mean anything. That’s the face he makes when he’s posting cat photos onto instagram or twitter and the face he makes when he’s reading some ludicrous skating drama that the media is, usually, misrepresenting. They did see a cute cat, earlier, curled up by two jack-o-lantern’s in a window, so his money might be on the cat photo over the ludicrous skating drama.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">(Not that there isn’t usually drama in the ice skating community, just that the media has an odd tendency to focus on the things that blow over immediately and miss the <em>big</em> things — but then, maybe Otabek is biased.)</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Otabek takes another sip of his tea and shifts so he can watch Yuri’s reflection in the window, so he doesn’t make another comment about him being a creeper — even though he clearly means it fondly, he doesn’t want Yuri to completely realize just how often he is watching him. Not yet.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Hey,” Yuri asks, which gives Otabek a reason to look at him, even if he doesn’t look up from his phone. “Are you a virgin?”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">His tea makes a valiant attempt at drowning him, and as he splutters he wonders if he should’ve let it. “What,” he fails to ask. He tries to clear his throat and manages an almost normal sounding, “Why do you ask?” after a few moments.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Yuri hasn’t looked up, eyes darting around as he continues to look at something on his phone. “There’s an article here that virgins and non-virgins skate different.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Otabek lets out a breath and feels like some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “Everyone skates differently,” he points out, reasonably he feels.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Yeah but like — then themselves — pre and post de-virginizing, ya’know?” Yuri <em>finally</em> looks up, gaze piercing through Otabek as it always does.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Otabek does not know — and he doesn’t really want to be having this conversation, now, like this. He’s not sure how he wants to be having this conversation — and he doesn’t want to spend too much time thinking about why he <em>does </em>want to have a conversation like this with Yuri — but he knows it’s not like this.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“So you’re not a virgin, right? When did you lose your virginity?” Yuri asks, and it’s some comfort that the tips of his ears do turn slightly pink even as he looks back at his phone.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Considering how best to respond, he delays by taking a drink of tea — or trying to. He’s apparently managed to finish his without noticing. He’s not sure if he should be flattered or insulted that Yuri seems confident he’s not a virgin. He’s not sure if he should be having a conversation with Yuri about how virginity is a social construct and really doesn’t make any sense. “It was during my two year gap from skating,” he admits, finally, not sure how to phrase everything he wants to say.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Yuri makes a face and looks up at him, “But Beka, you spent that whole time practicing, of course your skating would be different after.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">His shrug is more than a little relieved — even if he is now flattered that Yuri has looked back on his limited social media presence enough to recite that fact easily.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Yuri grumbles but goes back to his phone — before dragging him out of the cafe to go find a statue of a cat he’s heard about. Otabek is both oddly let down and relieved, and glad that Yuri has, seemingly, let it go.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">It occurs to him later, at the banquet, that Yuri never lets anything go, so thinking he has is probably a mistake.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Of course, he wouldn’t realize if he didn’t just overhear Victor telling Yuri, “Well, you know Yurio, if you want to see the difference you just have to give it a try yourself, I’m sure you can find someone to help you.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Otabek’s life flashes before his eyes and he stumbles to a stop — just in time for Victor to look up and grin widely at him and say, “Oh look, here’s Otabek now, I’m sure he’ll help you.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">And it’s not that he’s not in love with Yuri, and hasn’t thought about it — because he has, though he’s not really someone who wants to dwell on those sorts of thoughts. Mainly because for all that Yuri is of age, they’re not there yet and he knows it.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">And he very much does not want to have sex with Yuri just so Yuri can see if he skates differently after.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">But he also doesn’t want someone else to have sex with Yuri just so Yuri can see if he skates differently after.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">He thinks he might be having a panic attack about the two options, standing in the banquet, holding two glasses of champagne.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Oh, thanks Beka,” Yuri says, probably not realizing that behind his straight face Otabek is figuratively running in circles and waving his hands in the air and screaming. “<em>Do </em>you want to help me?” he asks, taking a sip and wrinkling his nose as he always does.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Otabek responds, as if he thought he’d say anything else.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Great,” Yuri throws back the rest of his drink and reaches out to grab Otabek when Katsuki intervenes.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Even if there are grocery stores open at this time of night, you know there isn’t a kitchen you can use in this hotel,” he says, calmly and reasonably.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Which causes the mental Otabek to run into a wall and fall down as he realizes he’s most definitely missed something and —</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“But I <em>need </em>to see if the new recipe is easier or not — can’t we find somewhere with a kitchen?”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Years later, Otabek will ask Yuri about why he actually dropped the subject of skating pre and post sex, and Yuri will laugh at him, and explain that Katsudon sat him down and had a very long conversation with him about sex and how it didn’t really change who you were as a person — and how awful it had been for both of them and how they’d both been blushing awfully and that he knew, now, that it was a stupid argument online.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">But for now Otabek finds himself following Yuri around a foreign city, looking for somewhere they’ll be allowed to use an oven so they can compare a simplified Pirozhki recipe to the classic.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I definitely wanna write for this pairing again, and maybe something that's actually something. But shit son, I had to get this up and had a busy day so, I'm sorry and I hope you all enjoyed the little bit of ridiculousness that this is. </p><p>Unedited so let me know if anything is wonky. </p><p>If you wanna chat come bug me on my <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/blog/capriciouswrites">writing tumblr</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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